After making a strong start with the team and some good discussions, I’ve rejoined in a full time capacity. I look forward to making major contributions to another exciting bicycle product lined up. It’s a dream project for me with many features we could only dreamed of previously.

I'm helping my old team back at GARMIN develop a new cutting edge radar product. We're pushing the envelope of what's possible developing a next generation bicycle radar that will set the standard in bicycle radar safety.I've been working on an ARM Cortex-M Microcontroller for the setup of debugging tools, real-time and post-processing processing of radar data, writing tests and creating little Python test apps for various uses from data collection to target simulation.As the project progresses I will likely be working to create test metrics and leveraging past experience to help the algorithms team and product analysis team deliver a 5-star product. I am excited to see another product in the series make a successful appearance.

In 2023 I was faced with dilemna of working from home without reliable electricity. Working as a consultant that worked on embedded systems and being paid per hour, but losing valuable time due to electricity outages, I quickly realised that I needed a backup power source. Within a short while of having a portable power station I realised that the system was capable of doing much more than just power my work setup and I set out to help others do the same.I spoke to Electricians, other consumers and solar companies to reach the conclusion that big companies weren't really interested in small systems, small systems were not being installed correctly and that people needed affordable solutions in this space. My goal was to make it safer and faster to install small portable systems to enable the every-day person to afford this.I dove right into regulations and learnt about electrical distribution boards and consulted with electricians to finally arrive at a design that I was satisfied was both safer than what was being done and completely compliant. I then sub-contracted to get someone to help me design the mechanical part of the system until I was ready to market this.As a new entrepreneur I bit off a bit more than I can chew though by trying to do both design, manufacture and client-facing marketing and the project came to a very near halt with many compliance related roadblocks that could not be completely overcome without more resources.Although the project still holds promise for other African nations struggling with grid instability, with load-shedding being brought more under control in 2024, I finally decided to press pause on this venture and turn my love for product development back to familiar sights.

I was contracted independently by Two-a-Day (a fruit warehousing and exporter in the apples and pear district of Grabouw, South Africa) to help them perform a major upgrade to a delivery truck scanning system which they had already implemented. The current system was capable of scanning QR codes located on the bins of fruit that indicated which farm these crates had come from. My job was to overhaul the system to be able to fully scan and position each bin in a delivery. This was not completely unlike previous tracking software systems I had helped to design and optimise, so I was eager to apply my skillset to the challenge.I did this by designing a two-sided, 4 by 2 camera system that would simultaneously scan the trucks from both sides using a stereoscopic camera that provided both images and depth information. This relied on large data collection efforts to enable high accuracy bin detection and previous real-time-tracking knowledge to build a tracker capable of tracking bins as they narrowly passed the cameras. Balancing processing speed and image clarity (for QR detection) turned out to be a main challenge of this project, along with balancing customer feature expectations with project delivery in the given timeframe.For this project I started alongside Ben from Cape AI who helped me apply my previous data collection, analysis and optimization knowledge from radar algorithms to the unique space of computer vision. I then did most of the core tracking and scripting work for this project myself. Finally I finished this project with the help of Pieter Uys from Two-a-Day who helped me integrate the system into his web dashboard for the operators.

Working as an independent contractor with Cape AI for a client of theirs to add cloud-dashboard integration to a product. I am assisting with the design of the RTOS embedded software responsible for handling the flow of communication from sensors on the device to the cloud using a quectel modem and lwm2m communication. The end result will be a product with sensor data integrated into a cloud dashboard, over-the-air updates and remote device management ready for roll-out.

Responsibilities:* Coordinated algorithm improvements as a key technical contributor / algorithm team leader on multiple new Varia Bicycle Radar products* Developed new methods of measuring product performance on multiple products* Contributed to algorithm improvements for Approach R10 Golf Simulator and worked to create first standard of performance reporting* Contributed to setting up recruitment procedure for various roles and interviewing candidates* Coached 4 junior team members from onboarding to performance reviews, career goal-setting, looking for training opportunities and "sponsoring" work opportunities on bigger tasks* Worked closely with software manager and site manager to implement / improve on equitable recruitment processes* Took initiative to create small dedicated website for our site to showcase our work and culture and to host interview challenges that was used when we were interviewing new candidates* Started a tools team that collaborated with other colleagues in Canada and pioneered the use of new machine learning tools at our site in Stellenbosch* Developed internal C# MVVM tools for factory calibration, other internal testing and a specialised app for classifying radar data with range information* Implemented algorithms (fixed bugs and implemented rule-based and ML solutions) in C and C++ on the products* Leveraged in-house genetic algorithm optimisation tool on local HPC cluster and Azure to leverage classified radar data with performance metrics to improve product performance

After developing a keen interest in robotics and hobby electronics while studying EE Engineering at Stellenbosch University, I had started the robotics club at the university with students. It was during the running of this club that I stumbled accross GARMIN and met Franz Struwig and Nolan Van Heerden (and later Denho Geldenhuys), who eventually gave me the amazing blessing of being able to join the GARMIN R&D Team at Stellenbosch.I joined eager to learn, eager to discover what I'm good at and knowing (after the somewhat humbling university experience), that I had much to learn and would definitely be a life-long student of the sciences! They put me to work writing small manageable firmware tasks, on data classification and on product analysis. I also collected product feedback from students while working on technical tools to analyse the bicycle radar.After gaining more experience, I was given more rope to help in software development and played a key role in improving the data collection process, directly enabling better product experiences. During this time I was taught to "eat my own dogfood" and regularly went out for data collection bicycle rides to test algorithms that we were working on myself. I think Nolan also recognised in me, the drive to want to make a positive difference in our work culture, and consequently he allowed me even in my junior state to be involved in the preparation of various workplace values employee engagement related activities. He even started pulling my in to interviews for new candidates which gave me greater insight into the amount of thought and work that GARMIN puts in.My initial role of product analysis had also grown too large for me so we hired a sport scientist to take on a full-time product analyst role. This enable me to focus my efforts on the technical side of product development and make small meaningful contributions to the site.

Sirkits was a robotics store developing an educational robot platform for schools with the goal of making programming more fun. Inspired by the creativity and fun I saw the engineering field had to offer, this also led me to head up the Robotics Club as a volunteer.Responsibilities:* Vision casting team of 8 part-time awesome people* Marketing and sales* Recruitment* Building the website* Networking, establishing key relationshipsThis was an incredibly interesting and fun journey for all of us. We didn’t get to see our robot “Sir Henry” to mass production, but we saw excited pupils at a pilot school and had a lot of fun building this! Without this job and the volunteering in the Robotics Club I would not have been introduced to GARMIN